Fish Hill to Stanton

Today's walk didn't get off to the best of starts, but it got better and better, ending in the delightful Cotswold village of Stanton. We had originally hoped to get as far as Winchcombe, but yesterday's slow progress because of the mud made me worried that it would be too far, so in the middle of the night we decided to finish the walk at Stumps Cross (SP076304); we left Richard's car there and drove mine back to the Fish Hill picnic site (SP121368). However there was a burning smell from my car and I got in a panic and decided that we had to take it to a garage in Evesham. Much driving around ensued, though we didn't find anyone to look at the car until a week later when I was back home in Norfolk. So we lost a couple of hours at the beginning of the day, and decided that we didn't have time to get as far as Stumps Cross...Back we went, and moved Richard's car to a lay-by at SP057344 on the B4632 about a kilometre from Stanton. Then we drove back to the Fish Hill Picnic Site and we were off at last. It was dry all day, though a bit misty.

We crossed the A44 at Fish Hill. So what's with this funny name? One story is that monks from Pershore Abbey kept their fish in caves on the hill; whatever we walked past a house called "The Fish", which I think used to be a pub (The Fish Hotel is on the opposite side of the road). We went through a little copse and emerged onto open parkland, complete with sheep. The folly of Broadway Tower came into view and we walked towards it through a pretty little dry valley.

Access to Broadway Tower is from a deer park and the need to keep the deer within the park probably explains why the path down to Broadway initially runs alongside a not very attractive fence. There were good views down to Broadway, and there were steps to make the descent easier, but there were too many people about for my liking. As we walked into Broadway, almost immediately I was reminded of what I like and what I hate about this village - to our right there were some delightful buildings and, amazingly, I managed a photograph with no people or cars (shown below left). But then we turned left and walked down the main street, which was heaving with people who mostly appeared to be out shopping in Broadway's range of trendy shops.

The advantage of Broadway's status as "a place to go" is that has lots of places in which to eat or drink and lots of benches on which to sit. We had a picnic lunch with us, so we sat on a bench (on our waterproofs because everything was still damp from the torrential rain yesterday) to eat this, and Richard bought me a take-away cup of tea from a helpful little cafe nearby.

It was pleasant enough watching the world go by, but we were pleased we hadn't spent our Cotswolds Inns and Hotels voucher at the Broadway Hotel. Broadway is just too busy for us.

But then something amazing happened. We turned the corner from the main street onto Snowshill Road; there were still some attractive buildings, but all the people had disappeared. We left the road and crossed a little footbridge and a minor road, then climbed steadily up towards Broadway Coppice.

There were still a few other people about, but they were proper walkers (actually going rather faster than us) and suddenly I started enjoying the Cotswold Way.

There were good views back to Broadway, and after passing through the wood we continued along the ridge, with good views across the valley to Broadway Tower. Later, to the left there were fleeting glimpses down to Snowshill, another Cotswold village that I like (but it is not on the direct route of the Cotswold Way), whilst to the right we were looking over the Vale of Evesham. The guidebook told us to take a couple of right-hand options to head to Stanton rather than Snowshill; one of these was actually hidden behind some parked vehicles - we found it fine, but beware!

The route continued down a grassy valley, around a pond then alongside a stream to Stanton. Here the guidebook has it entirely right: "Stanton is one of those places one hesitates to write about or even mention too loudly, for it has a fragile charm that could all too easily be broken. Here, if anywhere, one feels at the very heart of the Cotswolds, for Stanton has a wealth of superb buildings and not a whiff of pretension." I love it! We pottered around the village for a while then walked along the minor road to the B4632 to where we had parked the car.

following leg